Thursday, July 06, 2017

Mapping Planetary Change with Leaflet

Why not use Leaflet maps to show a location changing over time? The latest version of Leaflet's mapping library includes the L.VideoOverlay class which allows you to add videos as an overlay to your maps. One use of this new video overlay class could be to show places changing over time.

Planet Video on OSM has used the L.VideoOverlay class to show an area changing over time using a series of satellite imagery captured on different dates. Once downloaded the series of satellite images were made into a video file. The satellite imagery was downloaded from Planet Labs and turned into a video with FFmpeg.

Once you have created a video it is fairly simple to overlay the video on top of a map using the new L.VideoOverlay class in Leaflet.js. To get started adding videos to your Leaflet maps you should have a look at the L.VideoOverlay Tutorial.